Not Everyone Convinced Former Trader Meant "It Wasn't A Question Of If I Was Going To Kill You, Just Of When" In A Figurative Sense

A year or so a go, commodities trader Vincent McCrudden was arrested for some things he put on a company website and some emails he sent out. The former involved an "execution" list containing the names of a handful of financial regulators, which he asked readers to aid him in crossing off ("I need your help," he wrote. "There are just too many for me alone"). The latter included an email to a CFTC staffer that noted: “You fucking corrupt piece of shit! I have let so many of you fucking corrupt mother fuckers off the hook for doing this to my life. You my friend are not getting away with this. I am going to do this my way now and you, you corrupt mother fucking piece of shit are the first on my list! laugh mother fucker…I am going to make you a test case!” To that end, the chief operating officer of the NFA was told, “It wasn’t ever a question of ‘if’ I was going to kill you, it was just of when." Were these emails particularly colorful? Yes. Should anyone who received them (or had their name placed on The List) been actually worried about losing his/her life? McCrudden could see how maybe things might have been interpretted that way, but no. As he told a judge, “I wrote provocative language on my website that could have been perceived as threatening. I would never intentionally hurt or cause bodily harm to another human being." And yet, this is still happening: Vincent P. McCrudden, a former New York commodities trader, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison for threatening to kill federal financial regulators. McCrudden, 51, who pleaded guilty last year, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley in federal court in Central Islip, New York...McCrudden said he was being persecuted for fighting back against unfair regulatory actions that destroyed his career. In addition to trading commodities, he ran his own hedge funds...McCrudden’s legal and regulatory entanglements began in 2000, when he was criminally charged with masking shortfalls in statements to his hedge-fund investors. The government said he included in his results money he expected to get from a lawsuit after Sumitomo Corp. (8053) was accused of manipulating the copper market. Ex-Trader McCrudden Gets 28 Months in Prison for Threats [Bloomberg]

A year or so a go, commodities trader Vincent McCrudden was arrested for some things he put on a company website and some emails he sent out. The former involved an "execution" list containing the names of 47 financial regulators, which he asked readers to aid him in crossing off ("I need your help," he wrote. "There are just too many for me alone"). The latter included an email to a CFTC staffer that noted: “You fucking corrupt piece of shit! I have let so many of you fucking corrupt mother fuckers off the hook for doing this to my life. You my friend are not getting away with this. I am going to do this my way now and you, you corrupt mother fucking piece of shit are the first on my list! laugh mother fucker…I am going to make you a test case!” To that end, the chief operating officer of the NFA was told, “It wasn’t ever a question of ‘if’ I was going to kill you, it was just of when." Were these emails particularly colorful? Yes. Should anyone who received them (or had their name placed on The List) been actually worried about losing his/her life? McCrudden could see how maybe things might have been interpretted that way, but no. As he told a judge, “I wrote provocative language on my website that could have been perceived as threatening. I would never intentionally hurt or cause bodily harm to another human being." And yet, this is still happening:

Vincent P. McCrudden, a former New York commodities trader, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison for threatening to kill federal financial regulators. McCrudden, 51, who pleaded guilty last year, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley in federal court in Central Islip, New York...McCrudden said he was being persecuted for fighting back against unfair regulatory actions that destroyed his career. In addition to trading commodities, he ran his own hedge funds...McCrudden’s legal and regulatory entanglements began in 2000, when he was criminally charged with masking shortfalls in statements to his hedge-fund investors. The government said he included in his results money he expected to get from a lawsuit after Sumitomo Corp. (8053) was accused of manipulating the copper market.

Have you ever had construction going on nearby your home? Was it loud? Annoying? Did keep it keep you up in the middle of the night? Did you seriously consider opening your window and screaming "Hey! Shut the hell up down there!" or even confronting the people making all that racket face to face? Olivier Desbarres can relate. Or at least he can half relate. Because while most of you were probably talked out of making some sort of scene, either by your significant other or your own impulse control, on October 20th Desbarres decided to go in another direction, the one that involved introducing himself to the construction workers building a house near his own by screaming "I'm gonna go after you, I will haunt you, I'm gonna burn your fucking house down, I will find your fucking family," a task he noted would be fairly simple and straightforward ("I can find [them] very easily," he explained, "I'm a man with resources"), in case there were doubts (a fairly reasonable concern, as there are a lot of people in Singapore and how were these guys supposed to know he had an army of Barclays researchers at his disposal?). Still worried that the group wasn't taking his threats seriously on account of the casual look he was sporting that morning-- shorts and sandals-- Desbarres then picked up some sheet metal and launched it in their direction, presumably to demonstrate he meant business.* Although that would have been a good time to make his exit, at that point Desbarres noticed that one of the men had been recording him without his consent, leading to: “You’re filming me? You think that’s good? Put your fucking phone down because I’m going to wait for you to come out and take that phone and shove it up your fucking ass.” According to one local publication, this whole thing started because the construction crew began working at 8:45am one day in October instead of 9am, the time Desbarres preferred. In related news, according to a person familiar with Barclays' policies concerning construction site meltdowns, "We consider such behavior and language unacceptable. It does not meet the high standard of conduct that we expect of our employees." Desbarres, who is no longer with the bank, has not yet returned Dealbreaker's call for comment.** Foul-mouth foreigner threatens workers and warns he will hunt down their families [Stomp] Barlcays Far Too Candid Camera [Sunday Times via Ian Fraser] Barclays Capital Appoints Olivier Desbarres as Head of FX Strategy, Asia-Pacific Ex-Japan [BarCap] Related (re: Barclays employees losing their shit in public): Barclays Global Head of Investment Banking Writes Tear-Stained Letter To Son’s School, Demands Teacher’s Firing For Trash Talking Barclays, Making Son Cry *Insane ranting + shorts + sandals can leave room for interpretation re: is this guy serious or not; insane ranting + shorts + sandals + grabbing whatever shit from a construction site is within arm's reach and throwing at people is generally-- though not always!-- pretty clear. **Possibly because we called in the middle of the night local time and he is on his way to New York to throw a piece of sheetrock at us; you know how he gets when his sleep is interrupted.

If you were going to try and extort money Bear Stears alum, how would you do it? Would you call him at his new job and talk trash about his wife? Would you call his house and tell his wife he was running around on her with another woman? Would you call his mother-in-law in New Jersey and breathe heavily into the phone? Or would you bring out the big guns and start sending pizzas, sometimes 20 at a time, to his home in New Canaan, as a sign you really meant business? Donato Anthony Minicozzi chose all of the above.

As some of you may recall, a month after Lehman Brothers went under, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released an interesting email Dick Fuld had sent to LEH vice-chairman Thomas Russo on Saturday, April 12, 2008, circa midnight. Dick had just come back from a dinner with Hank Paulson and was so excited to relay the details he couldn't wait 'til the next day to get in touch with Russo, who he apparently viewed as his "teacher." Fuld said his key "takeaways" were that the government loved Lehman, that Paulson wanted to "kill the bad hedge funds" (like those diabolical shorts Fuld knew were to blame for his problems), and that while the then Treasury Secretary appeared to have a "worried view" of Merrill Lynch, Dick got the sense that Paulson thought Lehman was in terrific shape. Per the bankruptcy documents put online last week, here's how the rest of the conversation between Fuld and his Sensei went.

Do you have a question for us? About anything? Send it here with the subject line "What do you think of this, Dealbreaker?" Q: Given that Shake Shack is practically Goldman Sachs adjacent, it would stand to reason Shake Shack is the best burger in NYC, as I would find it hard to believe Goldman would stand for anything less. Yet I'm skeptical. Where does it land on your NYC burger rankings and if it's not at the top, who is? No pressure but I'm planning a "last burgers" tour because I just got my cholesterol results back and if I don't cut meat out soon I'm probably looking at an early death by heart attack so I need to make this count. A: You're right to be skeptical about the supposed greatness of Shake Shack. It's a fine burger. It's okay. But okay isn't good enough, is it? Burgers are very important to me (and I sense they are to you too) so the answer is no, it is not. The high risk to your health necessitates a high reward, not something middling that elicits only a tepid golf clap. SS's burger is not the burger for me because it possesses only one of the four baseline qualities I want in a burger, those being: 1) the ability to order it (and have it actually come out) medium rare 2) a thick patty 3) bacon and 4) cheese. I actually feel a great deal of stress identifying, definitively, the number one, for fear of steering you in the wrong direction. I wish I were as organized and methodical about burgers as Greg Lippman is about sushi but c'est la vie. So let's talk about my tops, plural, any of which would make a fine last meal. Lure Fish Bar has a surprisingly great burger-- highly recommend. I love "The Cadillac" at PJ Clarke's but you have to get it with smothered onions. 5Napkin- yes. Spotted Pig- yes. Bill's Burger Bar- yes. Burger Joint- they don't do bacon so only in a pinch (people really get off on going there because of the "secret" hideaway aspect but: 1) We're talking about taste, not ambiance and 2) Going behind a velvet curtain in a hotel lobby into another room that seems out of place with its surroundings does not a secret hideaway make. Give me secret passwords, doors with those tiny little windows you slide from the inside, and a real sense of danger and then we can talk about whether or not the experience enhances the food, which it very well might because stuff probably tastes better when your adrenaline is flowing and you're thinking "I'm lucky to be alive" while eating it). My favorite burger ever was the one at The Stoned Crow but the stupid place closed and I'm still upset. The cook came from Corner Bistro and it represented everything that was good about the CB experience minus everything that sucks (meat that's too dry, bacon that's overcooked, the 5 hour wait with someone's elbow shoved in your rib cage). Peter Luger has a very, very good burger though I've only had it once because I find the idea of getting a burger there kind of an odd choice. You're here for a reason and that's not it. (I actually got into a pretty heated debate about this topic with a friend once who argued that you could/people do order it as a side, like "We'll have the steak-for-two, the shrimp cocktail, the french-fried potatoes, and a burger." He claimed to me he'd seen this happen with his own two eyes and then proceeded to make the case for why it's probably not that uncommon. First of all, I don't believe for a second that he really saw this happen and neither should you. But let's play a long for a moment and pretend he did. I love meat in practically every form, particularly red (and pork but not lamb) and a few seconds ago I typed the words "burgers are very important to me" and meant it but if you're ordering one on the side of your steak you have a problem.) I haven't been to JG Melon in forever and while I remember the burger being quite good, the real draw for me would be the cottage fries (my second favorite type after waffle), plus the manager who I'm guessing has been there since the place opened and the last time I was there led some kid out of the dining room by the collar while telling him "I am gonna shut you down" for reasons unknown. A new burger I tried recently was the one from a place called Jacob's Biscuits and Pickles and it was heaven. A friend tells me that Donovan's makes a "fantastic" burger and while I hesitate to recommend a place that I haven't tried myself, I trust his judgment so I think we'll be okay here. As for your medical results I'm not a doctor but let me just say this. In December I had a checkup for the first time in a few years, during which they took a bunch of blood as part of the routine physical. I didn't think much of it and then a day or two before I was supposed to get the results I started panicking when I realized I was going to find out what my cholesterol and other cholesterol-related levels were and that maybe they'd be bad because of how much I love meat and bacon and wonderful things like that, which are supposedly "going to kill you." What would I do? Would I have to start a new, meaningless/just-going-through-the-motions/what's-the-point-of-it-all life without them? I legitimately became pre-emptively depressed at the thought. Then I got my results: not only are my cholesterol levels great but my triglycerides score is "even more impressive" (average is 134, mine is 47, suck it, everyone). What can we learn from this? I took it to mean that the aforementioned delicacies aren't actually bad for you at all and I suggest you do the same. Q: Here's a question for that portion of your readership that uses Bloomberg regularly and logs in with a B-Unit token. How many times do you need to swipe your finger on average before the damn thing works? How many time would be reasonable? Maybe I'm a vampire or a replicant or whatever mythical creature is known for not having fingerprints, but it takes me on average 8-10 swipes. The few days in my life I've verified on the first swipe I make sure to buy a lottery ticket, or do a trade with GS. How many swipes do you think it is reasonable for Bloomberg to expect me to tolerate? And, follow-up question: what the hell does "Swipe Longer" mean? It sounds kind of porn-y, even coming from a little plastic doodad. -Guy who remembers when Bloomberg was a physical machine and you could get on a plane without showing any ID. A: I don't use Bloomberg but I sit across from someone who does who I assume would (has?) pose(d) the exact same question to Bloomberg Help Desk if he could get himself down to a 7 on the searing anger scale long enough to breathe and type it out. Instead he yells "Oh for fuck's sake, Bloomberg!" on average 8-10 times a day, gets really irritated when someone calls his phone to discuss the problem ("No, just email me," click) and one time had an amazingly awkward interaction with a technician who came to our office to fix our keyboard where he was like, "I don't know what you're doing here/you can't fix this/you're wasting my time" and the guy basically agreed but kept standing there while my colleague refused to look at him. "Swipe Longer" does sound porn-y. I assume it means you're supposedto swipe slower, which also sounds porn-y but I suspect you already knew that. Relatedly, while doing some research (Googling) to answer your question(s) I came across this, re: the B-UnitTM: "...our credit card-sized biometric security device gives you remote access to your Bloomberg Professional service - with the same level of rock-solid security you get on the terminal." These people are sick. Matt says: " I probably only average about 4-5 swipes but each failed swipe leaves me sure that I'll never get it right again and be doomed to staring at a blinking screen while hopelessly molesting a plastic card. I also find 'swipe longer' confusing though I think I've figured out that it doesn't mean 'swipe more slowly' but rather 'let us see a little more of your finger'. But it's still better than using the keyboard." Q: How do you think Steve is coping with losing out on the Dodgers? Do you think he'll try for another team? A: There's going to be hell to pay. Even if he had another team in mind, andthey were available, why would he go through the process for a third time? He should start a new pro league and destroy MLB/Bud Selig. Q: Do you keep in touch with Gianna from Beamers? Related, what was the geneses of the idea for that trip? A: The last time I chatted (texted) with Gianna was when she wanted me to attend the Beamers Christmas party in December, which I told you all to go to in my stead. Every few months she will reach out and ask me when I'm going to stop by again and I feel a bit badly because I never do and haven't been since the one time, though not that badly because I assume she just wants me to bring paying customers and it would be fair to say at least some of the people on any given night are there because of all the free advertising we give the place (or not; it's all relative). I said this at the time but the field trip came about because several months prior, a Connecticut resident was pulled over and charged with a DUI (and having an unlicensed gun on him). He was a UBS managing director and he had been coming from Beamers. We knew this because he offered this information up to the police and it made it into the Police Blotter section of one of my favorite publications, the Stamford Advocate. When I wrote my piece about it, I said this was a sign that the cultural relevance of Beamers to Wall Street North could no longer be ignored and that it deserved a profile. Then people kept asking when I was going to go and when they could expect to read the reportage and I realized I actually had to do it. For months I would come in to work and say to myself, just go to Beamers today, just fucking do it. Every day I dragged my heels I felt horribly guilty, like I was really letting everyone down so I finally said no more excuses, gave myself a deadline and went. Being able to cross things off your To Do list feels SO FREEING. Q: Is commenter PMCO a dude? A: Nope, she's a lady and, in fact, a high-powered business woman who manages and directs at one of the world's pre-eminent financial services firm, so show some respect. Q: WHEN IS BREAKING BAD COMING BACK? A: I don't know and it's killing me. Supposedly they started filming just this past Monday so that probably means we're out another six months? At least? I didn't watch it when it aired and then I did seasons 1-4 in like six weeks and decided that is the only way to watch TV. None of this waiting a week, I need to be able to go through 3 or 4 at a time. Now I'm in the same boat as the rest of you and it sucks. Worse than that, when is Homeland coming back? I think I did the whole season in a day when I was trying to fill the TV thriller series void and it may actually exceed my love of BB. In the meantime I've been subsisting on a steady diet of second and third-rate shows of the same genre like Prison Break (not after Season 2 because come on) and The Killing. It's not pretty. Q: How should I handle ex-colleagues who are hitting me up for a job but I think are incompetent? Related: How do I ask a guy for a job when I blatantly didn't help him out in his own job hunt? A: Oh god, I struggled with answering this, as did most of the people I polled because how are you supposed to be really honest in this situation? You can't be and it's awkward and you'd rather not deal with it at all and I assume you've been avoiding the matter entirely for at least a few weeks now and the guy probably just assumes you've decided not to help him and has burned you in effigy. Anyway, what seems to be the consensus is that hopefully you have a friendly relationship with the person doing the hiring for the job, in which case you should just casually be like, "Here's this guy's resume, which I'm only passing on to you because I promised I would, do what you want with it," and hope said person picks up what you're throwing down and/or figure's out your ex-colleague's incompetence on his own which he presumably will. Then tell the guy you tried- which you did- and you're good. Another person I consulted said that "if you think they are incompetent, chances are they think really highly of themselves, so just ask what they are making and whatever they say, your response should be that you just 'can't afford' someone of their caliber." As for your own personal situation, that was unfortunate. You should have at least faked going through the motions so as not to come come off like a total asshole (Friend 'o DB/Dispenser of Tough Love: "...if you were dumb enough to blatantly not help out, then you will be passed over. This is how things work in the real world.") But maybe you're a lovable scamp of an asshole who people like being around? In that case you could probably still salvage things if you really turn on the charm, otherwise I suggest working the contacts you haven't flipped off. Q: I have a gigantic prick of a co-worker. He's uptight, self-important, blames others for mistakes he's made and has somehow made it pretty far professionally despite being a halfwit. No one in our group can stand him and at least once a day he gets on the phone to yell at his kids, who are probably taking steps to become emancipated minors. I don't have a question, I just wanted to let that out. A: Good, I'm glad you did and I hope it made you feel at least a tiny bit better. It's times like these that I wish I had a business in which people could contact me with the name of a person who's a real thorn in their side and then me and my crack team of mercenaries/soldiers of fortune would show up at their place of work and accost them and make a scene, which would help them and be fun for us. We'd charge on a sliding scale, based on a variety of factors, such as what the offense was, how hard/dangerous it would be for us to infiltrate the place of work (do we have to rappel down the side of a building?), and so on and so forth. I feel like it could really work. Q: In May I will be starting a new job, located in Connecticut. I currently live in NYC. Is this going to suck? Do I need to move? I started making a pros/cons list for CT and all I could come up with for the pro side was "office is there" and "not much crime?". Should I stay or should I go? I'm 29, single, no kids. Another thing to take into consideration is that I'm not a morning person. A: You should move. At first I was thinking that it wasn't really a big deal that you're not a morning person (I'm not either, at all) and that Grand Central is a nice place, and you could nap on the way up and become a regular in the bar car on the way back and that moving didn't seem necessary. Then I remembered that me not being a morning person as it relates to getting to work/etc has no relevance to the real world/your situation. I have an office to go to, and most days I do, and I need to start producing things for my job at some point or I get yelled at (by readers) but it's all very loose and it doesn't make much difference if I'm physically at my desk at 8 (ROTFLMAO) or 9 (still funny) or 10 or 11. Basically, I wouldn't last a day at a normal job, which is what you're presumably taking. (Actually, I probably would last and really enjoy it for a day or maybe even two strictly because of, like, the novelty of it all. When I was a little kid, in addition to the standard imagination/scenario game of "house" I used to play "office." Some days I would be the boss, some days I would be the secretary, both roles pretty much entailed me sitting at a coffee table I was pretending was a desk and writing on stacks of papers. So, for me, I feel like going to/working at your place of business would be fun at first and that's probably also why Matt will often (accurately) be like, "You wouldn't understand this because you've never had a real job.") You're going to have to be up and out the door at a certain time every day and now having to catch a train will be an added level of anxiety, not to mention an infringement on precious sleep time. That said, while my vote is still to move, I don't think you should put crime or lack thereof in the pro column because have you read the Stamford Advocate or Greenwich Time lately? Every day it's headlines about burglaries and armed robbery and murders. Yesterday there was a story about a man who assaulted a woman with a dumbbell. Right now there's an article titled "Dead sheep, lit candles found" (authorities "suspect" the sheep was killed, though sure, maybe he lit a bunch of candles and committed suicide). In NYC, you're always surrounded by people- in the suburbs, no one can hear you scream. Good luck with the move! [Sidenote: Some other people say you should "make Connecticut your primary residence," by renting a place that you stay in during the week and staying in a place in NYC on the weekends, so you can avoid paying New York income tax and have the best of both worlds. Give Julian Robertson a call to discuss this further.]